Diagnostic Tools Aiding In Diagnosis

[CerebralEcstasy]

I was posting a reply to a thread over in clinical depression and it sparked the following thought regarding a diagnostic tool that would aid in the diagnosis of patients.

I've seen a few health diagnostic tools online, but have never seen them used in conjunction with a physicians office - at least not where I live.

What I would like to see is an indepth diagnostic tool available to physicians for use by their patients.

Perhaps a small kiosk in the doctors office that asks a battery of questions on all areas of health, rather than the sheet you get when first seeing a physician.

The program would then correlate the information, and print off the most prevalent concerns of the patient. This information would then be interpreted by the physician as to which treatment or what course of action
his/her patient should take.

I think this methodology would be able to address some of the growing concerns of misdiagnosis, patient/doctor miscommunication and the time allotted per patient constraints doctors of today are facing.

In a lot of cases patients may feel something is wrong, yet due to embarrassment, or memory they will not disclose these to their doctor. It is this information that I would like to see the doctor be able to access.

If your community/country uses this sort of self diagnostic tool, please let me know, I'd be interested in following up on them.

[CerebralEcstasy]

I found the following link...which is of notable interest.

http://www.pkc.com/papers%5Cglobeandmail.pdf

[UncleAl]

1) Do you live in a toxic society? Are the gains of productive citizens confiscated and tossed to the unproductive? Are criminals freely armed and unrestrained in theft, trespass, rape, and murder while honest citizens are disarmed? Is morality legislated and selectively heinously enforced?

2) Be depressed. Depression is anger without enthusiasm. Sane people would riot.

[CerebralEcstasy]

I was speaking more of a tool that diagnoses physical ailments, not only those manifested in the head.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by CerebralEcstasy

What I would like to see is an indepth diagnostic tool available to physicians for use by their patients.

Perhaps a small kiosk in the doctors office that asks a battery of questions on all areas of health, rather than the sheet you get when first seeing a physician.

The program would then correlate the information, and print off the most prevalent concerns of the patient. This information would then be interpreted by the physician as to which treatment or what course of action
his/her patient should take.

I worked in just such a program from 1984 to 1985, involving a specialized patient history collecting and analysis language known as “Converse”. Although typically implemented in the M[UMPS] programming language, I wrote an direct implementation in a early version of compiled Microsoft BASIC.

Although an extensive database of data collected directly from patients (rather than kiosks in an MD’s office, the data is collected at terminals in booths in the registration-area of Massachusetts General, Beth Israel, and perhaps a few other hospitals) has been collected since from the late 1970s until today, and it has been well received by the academic medical community, it’s popularity has been underwhelming, and seen little adoption outside of a few Boston area hospitals. Converse is described only in a few print publications, such as
Bloom SM, White RJ, Beckley RF, Slack WV. Converse: a means to write, edit, administer and summarize computer-based dialogue. Comput Biomed Res 1978; 11: 167-75.
and Dr. Slack’s more recent book, “Cybermedicine”,
and a few web-accessible documents, such as http://www.bidmc.harvard.edu/content...e/ClinComp.pdf.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not surprising to people familiar with clinical medicine), advanced medical information systems have proved far more difficult to introduce into the culture of most hospitals and physician practices than many early (1960-1980s) researchers and developers (myself included) believed.

I recommend that people seriously interested in the subject contact Dr. Slack or other Harvard medical faculty.

[medicography]

Originally Posted by UncleAI

Be depressed. Depression is anger without enthusiasm. Sane people would riot.

I love it!! Did you make this by yourself or is it a quotation? It's excellent!!